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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503534">Hand of Primus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RHplus/pseuds/RHplus'>RHplus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anonymity, Hikaru no Go AU (but not really), Identity Porn, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Misunderstandings, Secret Solenoid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:15:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,904</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503534</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RHplus/pseuds/RHplus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prowl was rarely caught by surprise and even less often caught without ideas on how to progress, but when he’d arranged a meeting with the mysterious master of online Vosian variant tactichess, the situation he currently found himself in was one eventuality he had been unable to plan for.</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Prowl plays space shougi and finds his fated rival</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Prowl/Skywarp (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Secret Solenoid '20-'21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hand of Primus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkDanc3r/gifts">DarkDanc3r</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Solenoid and best 2021 wishes to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkdanc3r">DarkDancer</a>! Sorry for the delay with posting, and I hope you can enjoy this fic about Prowl being really quite silly. I was really happy to get out of my usual shipping comfort zone for a bit and write an all-new rarepair.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Prowl lived for his job, even now, when the war was over. Perhaps even more so; more than a couple other members of the Autobot high command had seen fit to retire from positions of executive power, and that left a vacuum of mechs skilled in administrative work that Prowl, for one, was loathe to see filled with eager Decepticon applicants. No matter what more optimistic individuals, and the propaganda division, told the news, the faction divide wouldn’t be going away just because they couldn’t shoot blasters at each other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, the battle was still ongoing—but on datapads and in courts and elections. And Prowl would see to it that Autobot values and interests would be protected. Somebody had to do it...</span>
  <em>
    <span>keep</span>
  </em>
  <span> doing it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite his friends’ worry, Prowl didn’t think he was overtaxed. Sure, he was perpetually busy, but he preferred it that way. His specialized tactical co-processor meant he wouldn’t have been able to just </span>
  <em>
    <span>relax</span>
  </em>
  <span>, left without a challenging task. Prowl didn’t understand why his friends refused to accept this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Still, he did understand that everyone meant well, and he also understood that it was both polite and more effective in the long run for him to play along when they pressed him to ‘take a time-out’ and ‘chill’. That was why Prowl was now ‘relaxing’ at his home. Of course, his high-powered processor couldn’t just stop working and settle down, so any mental relaxation would be hard-won.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luckily, however, Prowl had discovered a pastime that neither Ratchet nor Jazz could object to, but which also kept his restless mind at work: Vosian variant tactichess. With the political situation stabilizing and the planetary Grid coming back online, there were various old and new little conveniences popping up. Some of those were online gaming platforms, and Jazz had directed Prowl to one that hosted anonymous tactichess matches. It was a very simple setup, the site offering little more than a low-quality 3D visual representation of the board, the function to place one’s pieces, and bare-bones match-finding and chat functions.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Decent opponents were not very common, but Prowl entertained himself by taking on additional goals of forming particular shapes with his pieces and their trajectories in the 3D space of the field of play. It gave his tactical computer a light workout with no stakes or resulting stresses involved, and so even Ratchet had approved of this pastime.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On an evening cycle like any other, Prowl was asked for a match by a user who only displayed their automatically generated ID: 88857. Prowl accepted the challenger, as was his habit, and placed his opening move after the game system allotted him the first turn. He expected nothing much from a user who hadn’t even bothered to type in a handle, but after a moment of unusually quick back-and-forth, Prowl rebooted his optics and sat up straighter in his chair, now staring hard at the holo display screen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was losing: his opponent had made no wasted moves, though—remarkably—Prowl had not been able to catch on to that right away. Prowl felt a little thrill of both indignance and excitement in his emotional circuits and resettled on his seat. Not that his rank on the tactichess site’s leaderboard was of any real, practical importance, but he felt he should still defend his win-loss ratio to the best of his ability.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He made his next move.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After 14 matches and 12 losses over several cycles, Prowl was admittedly starting to wonder just who his opponent was. Vosian variant tactichess was famous for being a measure of tactical skill and multidimensional thinking, and without embarrassing himself with bragging, Prowl was well familiar with his own abilities, as well as with Autobot high command’s. The highest-ranking masters of Vosian tactichess were traditionally flight-capable warframes, owing to the fact that they usually came fitted with advanced flight support hardware and programming, capable of complicated calculations and with extraordinary powers of spatial recognition, but none who had held titles before the war had survived to see the following peace. Prowl couldn’t imagine that such frametypes—and such brilliant tacticians—would have avoided participation in the great struggle, so the likelihood that his opponent was a Neutral was low. Furthermore, Prowl was well aware of the mechs who could be expected to rival him within the two opposing factions, and he was reasonably certain he would have recognized their handles or at least playstyles, had they appeared on the site. At the very least, he was ready to wager that his mystery opponent was not an Autobot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl applied himself as best as he could to try and decipher the identity of his rival based on the data available. They never changed their handle into anything descriptive, so it offered nothing new. Their playstyle was unprecedented, unlike anything Prowl had come across in guides or match records. Their appearances were sporadic and unpredictable, and it was impossible to even deduce on which side of Cybertron they were situated, or when they had free time, or when they were tied up with work.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl remained steadily at the top of the leaderboard on the site, but despite the ease with which his opponent often defeated him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>they</span>
  </em>
  <span> never appeared high in the top score list. Prowl deduced that this was due to the bot only playing rarely and at irregular times. That the mystery opponent cared not for their ranking was slightly aggravating, though equally intriguing. Regardless of how he was getting no closer to finding out who he was playing against, Prowl was quick to challenge them to a game whenever he saw that number code username appear on the online list. He was never refused, much to his pleasure.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before long, Prowl was forced to admit to himself that he would have to consider the very real possibility that his rival player was a Decepticon. The enemy faction famously had its share of brilliant tactical thinkers, after all. Megatron himself, Soundwave, perhaps Onslaught or Shockwave... Prowl couldn’t stop himself from growing increasingly curious, as well as slightly worried. The engaging matches were starting to take up processor time even during his actual work, and if he was letting a Decepticon affect him to this extent...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Therefore, Prowl took the plunge and contacted his opponent.</span>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <span>RangingRook: Greetings. This is RangingRook. Thank you for the numerous engaging matches.</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>RangingRook: Please excuse my indiscretion, but I had been wondering if you would perhaps be amenable to meeting offline, circumstances permitting.</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>88857: asdasdf lmao u can do ths??</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>88857:*this</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>88857: like i mean chattiig    haha</span>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>Prowl had to pause, frowning at his screen in confusion and admittedly, affront. Why did a bot so brilliant as his tactichess rival seem like they hardly knew how to type correctly? But then—it dawned on him—it too must have been a way of covering up their identity. It was impossible for anybody to match their phrasing to wartime message logs like this. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Brilliant</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <span>88857: anywauy thx 4 alwats playing    me 2!! im having alot of fun :D</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>88857: noneof my friennns wanna play me xoz I keep winning lmaoo</span>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>After he managed to decipher the coded phrases, Prowl felt a little thrum of warmth in his systems.</span>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <span>RangingRook: I am not surprised. I am sure a player of your caliber has remarkable difficulty finding adequate challengers. I am glad to hear playing against me has been enjoyable.</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>RangingRook: However, if I may be so bold—may I hear an answer to my earlier request?</span>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>Prowl paused and clasped his hands together in his lap to make sure he would not impolitely pressure 88857 any further. He could feel his doorwings twitch in an unbecoming display of nervousness, luckily not seen by anyone.</span>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <span>88857: hmmmmmm sure! sounds un lol!</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>88857: *fUN</span>
  </p>
  <p>
    <span>88857: where tho??+</span>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>Prowl felt the faint smile on his face and willed it to dissipate, steadying himself once more to continue having a reasonable discussion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl sat in the cubicle he’d commandeered, scanning the clientele expressionlessly. Inwardly, however, he could detect a slightly elevated fuel pumping rate, a minute jitter of his systems. He was excited, he thought. The prospect of finding an intellectual peer, someone he might be ‘in the same wavelength with’, as it were, was quite exhilarating.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had no idea what user 88857 might look like, but he thought he would be able to tell. And in any case, 88857 would be able to find </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. They had agreed that Prowl would be waiting alone at a table, and besides, Prowl would not have been surprised if someone as astute as his opponent had already figured out his true identity, as he had not gone to the lengths 88857 had to conceal it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a minor clamor at the door of the establishment, and then a broad-winged figure emerged, sidling in through the door and between a couple of exiting bots. A standard model seeker, Prowl could tell immediately – but it wasn’t just any nameless pair of wings: it was a member of the very notorious Decepticon Command Trine once serving under ex-Air Commander Starscream. Lieutenant Commander Skywarp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl stared, frowning in irritated confusion. Skywarp held no official position in the post-war government, unlike his trine leader, but he remained listed as a high-risk individual in Prowl’s data banks. He was well known for his incredibly useful autonomous space-warping outlier ability and exemplary ruthlessness. Why was </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> in an out-of-the-way oil house favored by Neutrals? Prowl allowed his tactical unit to calculate various possible plans of actions in case the seeker would react to his presence with aggression.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Some time passed as Prowl tensely monitored Lieutenant Commander Skywarp’s movements, but despite having come to the oil house by himself, he seemed to be lost. It didn’t take him long to spot Prowl, as expected of a sharp-opticked combatant, but his gaze slid aside after only a moment’s wary consideration. Fortunate.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Skywarp continued searching but seemed to not find what, or who, he was after. The time which had lapsed before Prowl made the connection might have been embarrassing, if the conclusion hasn’t been so absurd.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It could be that the Decepticon was here for a prearranged meeting, looking for a partner whose outward appearance was unknown to him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It could be that Skywarp was looking for </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With some dread, Prowl called out. “Tactichess Central 2 user 88857?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Skywarp looked at him, but there was no recognition in his optics. Prowl reset his optics, and then watched Skywarp look to both of his sides and then also reset his optics. Only then did Prowl see realization light up his features.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re RangingRook?” Skywarp asked incredulously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Prowl replied stiffly, gripping the back of the seat he’d just risen from.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Skywarp blinked his optics on and off again, glanced around once more, and then drew in a long vent. “Huh,” he said, and his wings moved in a shrugging motion that reminded Prowl of his old Praxian batch-mates. Then, the seeker came to his table and shuffled into a seat across the table from Prowl, who also sat down.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They stared at each other for a short while.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” Skywarp said awkwardly. “You wanted to meet?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Yes,” Prowl admitted once more, dismayed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before things could become altogether too awkward, Prowl reset his vocalizer and poked at the button in the middle of the table, turning on the holoprojector with the menu, then gesturing with his hand. “As I invited you, I suppose it is only fair I sponsor you a drink.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Just this seemed to lift Skywarp’s mood considerably, and he started studying the menu eagerly. Prowl reviewed his list of prospective topics to bring up with 88857, and hesitated. Skywarp placed his order before Prowl managed to decide on what to say.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How come you were not credited with any leadership assignments on tactical operations, during the war?” Prowl asked, still frowning. He had thought that once he could combine 88857’s designation with his extensive memory archives of Autobot and Decepticon campaigns, he would have been able to find evidence of real-world applications of his rival’s exceptional skill. But Skywarp had none. He had been steadily deployed only under Starscream and despite his other merits, held a reputation as...not the brightest bulb in the box. But that made </span>
  <em>
    <span>no sense</span>
  </em>
  <span> next to his unprecedented skill in Vosian variant tachichess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, uh, I’m no good at all that,” Skywarp admitted, though he seemed awkward now, as well. “I just swoop or warp in and shoot stuff, usually. But I’m real good at that, you know!” It seemed he didn’t want Prowl to look down on him, for whatever reason.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then, how...how do you do it?” Prowl asked, and only after seeing the weirded out look Skywarp gave him did he manage to smooth out his own pained expression. “How are you so strong in Vosian variant tactichess?” he reiterated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um...well, I just put the pieces out there like poit, poit, poit, and like swoosh, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>bam</span>
  </em>
  <span>….and then it works out, in the end,” Skywarp said at length, gesturing vaguely as if placing his moves in the three-dimensional playing space. “It’s just something I’ve always been good at, but Screamer and TC haven’t played me in millions of years coz they’re weenies.” Skywarp bent slightly closer to Prowl across the tabletop, speaking in a conspiratorial stage whisper: “That means</span>
  <em>
    <span> loser.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl cycled his optics off and on again. “...But...that is not how...that’s not how it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>supposed </span>
  </em>
  <span>to work,” he said helplessly. “There is no way you could just...</span>
  <em>
    <span>win</span>
  </em>
  <span>, without making predictions and doing the calculations…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Skywarp scratched the back of his neck, leaning backwards again, and his wings took a complicated angle that Prowl couldn’t read. There was a pause as Skywarp’s tall, multicolored highgrade cocktail was delivered, and Skywarp took a loud slurp of it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I dunno,” Skywarp said finally, actually looking somewhat apologetic. “I don’t, like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>think </span>
  </em>
  <span>about it, I just do it, and it works out…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl’s tacnet was, for once, not helping him at all, as it seemed that Skywarp defied everything Prowl knew about tactichess, logic, and the generalities of the universe. Supposedly, theoretically, Skywarp could somehow produce the calculations that allowed him to pull off the very accurate space jumps he was known for, but one would expect he would at least be </span>
  <em>
    <span>aware </span>
  </em>
  <span>of the mechanics of it… And if Skywarp was capable of such effortless foresight, how could it be that he was still known for falling into every trap that Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, or Bumblebee thought to set up? Even the Autobots’ human allies had outsmarted Skywarp, among other Decepticons, for crying out loud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The contradiction was too much, and Prowl shut off his tactical co-processor for once, before it could jam itself on a logic loop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, Prowl leaned both his forearms on the table, and pinched his olfactory ridge right below his chevron, letting out a loud gust of air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet, somehow, Prowl found that he was not upset, right now. His processor felt still and empty, shocked into inactivity. He did not dislike the odd feeling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Actually, it was just as well, he thought – this was in fact just according to his opponent’s usual MO. He was always delivering moves Prowl couldn’t predict. He could feel the threat of a smile tickling the corner of his lip plates, even.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl could hear Skywarp fidgeting, broad wings touching lightly on the walls of the cubicle. Prowl let go of his olfactory ridge and clasped his hands on the table, looking up at the seeker. Judging by how his red optics turned round, he supposed the slight smile had indeed made a home on his lips.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That is...interesting,” Prowl said tentatively. He could not understand how Skywarp the mech worked, how he achieved what he did. That was intriguing. Neither Prowl’s tactical unit or his standard logical prediction could tell him what to expect with the seeker, what surprising ways his highly specific talent might manifest in. Prowl was curious to see what other hidden sides there might be to this mech he had previously dismissed as nothing more than another Decepticon combatant, if a particularly dangerous one. He wanted to know more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“....Uhhuh?” Skywarp replied, looking both cautious and eager.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl considered the situation. Without being able to rely on his tactical unit for now, he found he felt somewhat excited, and even impatient. He looked up at Skywarp again, meeting his optics steady on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prowl reached up and slowly placed his hands on both of Skywarp’s shoulders. The seeker glanced at both of them, perhaps a bit bewildered, but he didn’t draw away. Prowl stood up halfway and pushed closer, noting absently that Skywarp’s purple and black wings were twitching up and down. He could have pushed Prowl away easily, as he outmassed the patrol car grounder by far, but didn’t. Before Skywarp managed to utter a word, Prowl leaned in, steady and inexorable, and planted a kiss on his lips.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And Screamer and TC kept saying being good at tactichess is useless,” Skywarp said through a goofy grin, sprawled across Prowl’s recharge station. Prowl grunted and shifted to find a nicer position that placed less weight on his bumper as he lounged on Skywarp in turn.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Foolish,” Prowl decreed. “Very short-sighted, for an Air Commander.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/leclairage/pseuds/perictione">Peri</a> for beta as always, and extra thanks to everyone on Off Orbit for the idea in general and all the help with the details! Couldn't have done it without you all. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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